There
have been hundreds of horrific stories from the gas chambers
of Auschwitz and other Nazi camps. here is one from the
aftermath. . .

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Events following the liberation of
Buchenwald:

[A correspondence with Eli Wiesel
about his memoirs,
Night,
and how the account varies significantly from one
language-version to the next]

[QUESTION
TO ELI WIESEL]: ". . . BUT the
Yiddish
[of Un di velt, your early version of
Night]continues: "Early the next day, Jewish boys ran off
to Weimar to steal clothing and potatoes. And to rape German
girls [un tsu fargvaldikn daytshe shikses].
The historical commandment of revenge was not
fulfilled."

Or,
in Stella Rodway's
English rendition: "On
the following morning, some of the young men went to Weimar
to get some potatoes and clothes - and to sleep with girls.
But of revenge, not a sign."

To describe the differences between these versions as a
stylistic reworking is to miss the extent of what is
suppressed in the French. Un di
velt depicts a post-Holocaust landscape in which
Jewish boys "run off" to steal provisions and rape German
girls; Night extracts
from this scene of lawless retribution a far more innocent
picture of the aftermath of the war, with young men going
off to the nearest city to look for clothes and sex.

In the Yiddish, the survivors are explicitly described as
Jews and their victims (or intended victims) as German; in
the French, they are just young men and women. The narrator
of both versions decries the Jewish failure to take revenge
against the Germans, but this failure means something
different when it is emblematized, as it is in Yiddish, with
the rape of German women.

The implication, in the Yiddish, is that rape is a
frivolous dereliction of the obligation to fulfill the
"historical commandment of revenge"; presumably fulfillment
of this obligation would involve a concerted and public act
of retribution with a clearly defined target.
Un di velt does not
spell out what form this retribution might take, only that
it is sanctioned - even commanded - by Jewish history and
tradition.